Case Number 17598

BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE (2009) (BLU-RAY)

The Charge

Opening Statement

Blood is a live-action adaptation of an anime series of the same name.
If only the anime had been an adaptation of a video game, then it would all make
perfect sense.

Facts of the Case

Saya is a human/vampire hybrid who's also a samurai. She works for the
clandestine anti-demon organization The Council, dispatched here and there to
jam her huge sword into the balls of Hellspawn. Her latest assignment is on an
American military base where the mightiest demon on Earth is sniffing around. So
Saya jumps into a schoolgirl costume (of course), rescues a confused American
girl from gaggles of demonites, and embarks on a swashbuckling adventure crammed
full of CGI blood and over stylized decapitations. Her ultimate destination: a
rendezvous with the source of all vampire evil.

The Evidence

This whole enterprise looks like a comic book and feels like a video game. If
that one sentence appeals to you, then I submit you are the film's target
audience. Blood: The Last Vampire isn't a bad movie, it's just an
empty-caloric movie-going experience. A fantasy/action flick that embraces a
hyperkinetic shooting style and trippy visual look, while kicking substance and
coherence to the curb. Then curb-stomps it.

Edit that. The plot makes as much sense as your typical
Japanese-schoolgirl-vampire-samurai-kills-a-bunch-of-demons movie, which is of
course a backhanded compliment. And here's another one: it doesn't make any
less sense than some of the crazy anime I've seen over the years.

The narrative is just a method to keep the action scenes loosely connected
to each other, and judged by that rubric, it succeeds. All Saya needs is to be
motored from one demon encounter to the next, and the script allows for that.
Once she does get her sword out to get her stab on, the real purpose of
Blood gains traction: wholesale demon slaughter filmed stylishly with
zero regard for real-world physics. The fact that Saya is a vampire earns her
some slack on the aerial attacks, and director Chris Nahon goes out of his way
to make sure that when she does drive her instrument of death into the brow of
an undead target, the computers rendering the blood animation blow a
motherboard. There is a ton of blood and gore here, but the violence is
so comic book-y it never feels real. As far as I could tell, all of the blood
was CGI, which certainly saves on the food coloring budget, though realism is
sacrificed at the altar of garishness. That's the tone of the movie, and I get
that, it's just when you fully embrace the video game angle -- as Blood
has -- there are no consequences, and thus no real tension. What you have left
is eye candy, and thankfully the eye-candy here is pretty nasty, if utterly
devoid of nutritional content.

That metaphor got away from me at the end, but you know what I'm talking
about. This movie is all glitz...and that just might just be enough.

The Blu-ray transfer is a looker, the bump in resolution and color
saturation doing wonders to stylize the violence even further. Those
computer-generated blood globules really pop off the screen. What doesn't fare
well are the creature effects -- and by "doesn't fare well" I mean
"looks ridiculously bad." The DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio offers a fine
aural complement to the film's attractive visual fidelity, making for a
satisfying 1-2 HD punch. Extras: two standard-def featurettes on the making-of
and the stunts, and a Blu-ray exclusive storyboard gallery (whoop-dee-doo).

Closing Statement

There's some disposable fun to be had here, but I doubt you'll remember any
of it in a month or so.